Guided by faculty at the top of their fields, UNT students proved again this spring that they can excel both in and outside the classroom. UNT’s Moot Court Squad and the UNT Debate Team argued their way to top spots in state and national competitions. And students also were recognized for their innovative research and creative design projects, with many earning prestigious awards, scholarships and fellowships for their work. Their achievements speak to UNT’s commitment to offer the very best undergraduate and graduate education to its students and to graduate the leaders of tomorrow.
 
Top honors at competitions
Rebekah Samaniego-Kopsky, a political science and English major, and Shelby Henderson, a junior political science and history major, took first place in the Texas Undergraduate Moot Court Association Tournament. Students argued a fictional case where a same-sex-couple, federally mandated to purchase a health insurance policy, asked for the same protections given to heterosexual couples under the 14th Amendment.
UNT Debate Squad students placed among the top eight colleges and universities in the Cross Examination Debate Association National Tournament. Amy Schade, a freshman biological sciences major, and Brian Kersch, a sophomore political science major, reached the quarterfinals by posting six wins in the tournament’s preliminary rounds. Schade and Collin Quinn, a sophomore communication studies major, also took first place at the National Junior Division Debate Tournament.
Design students in the College of Visual Arts and Design also earned top honors this spring. Fashion design students won 15 awards at Dallas Career Day in April, snagging more than a third of the 39 awards at the competition hosted by Fashion Group International. Communication design students earned a total of $13,500 in scholarships and awards for their entries in the Dallas Society of Visual Communications National Student Show, the Fort Worth Addys, the Dallas Addys and the Creative Summit awards competition, while CVAD photography and fibers students won three of four DeGolyer awards at the Dallas Museum of Art.
In the College of Music, jazz students and their faculty mentors earned eight honors in DownBeat magazine’s 33rd annual Student Music Awards.
 
TAMS scholars
Two Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science students received Goldwater scholarships, which are among the nation’s most prestigious for individuals planning careers in mathematics, science and engineering. Patricia Nano, worked with Jannon Fuchs, professor of biological sciences to model the development and loss of primary cilia in the oligodendrocyte lineage that could advance the treatment of diseases such as multiple sclerosis and transverse myelitis. Andrew Ding, worked with Angela Wilson, professor of chemistry, using an innovative method known as ccCA-ONIOM to study the interaction of water molecules with a graphite surface. Udayan Vaidya and Lee Chen received honorable mention in the competition.
Four TAMS students also won awards in the 2011 Young Epidemiology Scholars Competition, earning $19,000 in scholarships. Vaidya placed seventh in the nation with his research to refine a computational model to predict outbreaks of Dengue fever. Jessie Ho earned an award for her research on HIV in pediatric and maternal patients in Texas border counties and urban areas. Semifinalists included Anjana Ram, who created a rule-based mathematical model to predict the effect of strategic vaccination for influenza, and Justin Zhao, who is studying the dynamics of epidemics through computational modeling of infectious diseases in diverse populations.
 
Research awards
For her medical geography research on tuberculosis strains among Hispanics in Tarrant County, Jody Huddleston, who is pursuing a doctorate in environmental science, was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
Also receiving the fellowship is chemistry doctoral student Rebecca Weber. She is helping UNT researchers better develop the computational chemistry process known as the multi-reference correlation consistent composite approach, or MR-ccCA.
Student research awards also were given for UNT’s University Scholars Day, which celebrates the achievements of undergraduate researchers. At the April event, 22 undergraduate students were recognized for papers and posters spanning research in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences.
Adrian Cadar (’11), a biology major who graduated in May, was recognized there for his National Institutes of Health summer internship at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Md. The prestigious honor will allow Cadar to study pathophysiology, or how people move, to help patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease.